


Just Sounds Better

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Family, Gen, Gen Fic, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:30:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brotherhood is not such a fragile thing as Al has sometimes feared.</p><p>[Major spoilers for Brotherhood.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Sounds Better

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Eltea. <3 The prompt was "ELRIC HUGS!!" :D

The call from Ed comes exactly eight days after they parted ways in Resembool, which Al believes means that Colonel Mustang has won the betting pool.

Ed has a long, long list of reasons why they should travel together—everything from “I forget to brush my teeth without your nagging” to “‘The Elric _Brothers_ ’ just sounds better”—but given how fast and how much he’s speaking, Al thinks he partly just misses having someone to talk to. Al doesn’t really care what the truest reason is, because he misses his brother—the brother who would sacrifice his pride and his power so that Al could be whole.

They meet up three days later, Ed’s yellow head popping up over shoulders in the crowd at the train station.

“How’ve you been?” Al asks.

“Great,” Ed says, breezily. “So what are we looking for?”

Al wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but he hasn’t forgotten that with Ed, _trouble_ is the default answer.

So it’s no surprise to anyone when the one rogue alchemist is a five-man cadre of rogue alchemists who have woven alkahestry into the creation of a massive dragon chimera. It’s even less of a surprise that they end up fighting it on an open plain where there’s nothing left for it to torch.

Al’s pretty sure that singed smell is coming from his own hair. He transmutes the bedrock beneath the grass into into a sharp spike, and the dragon dodges directly into the range of Ed’s sword. This time, Ed wedges the blade under a scale, rips it off, and stabs into the creature’s flesh, and it releases a howl so high and unearthly that Al’s skin crawls all over. The shivers aren’t enough, though, to stop him from raising the rock again, this time as a series of arches that loop over the dragon’s winding form and then cinch in tightly, pinning it securely to the ground.

The dragon roars, writhes, and sets the last forlorn sapling left on the battlefield alight, but it seems to be subdued. Al lets go of a deep breath.

That’s when its tail whips to the side, catching Ed squarely in the stomach and flinging him into the air. He lands _hard_ —not before Al sees him start to put his hands together and then stop—and the seconds that it takes Al to scramble over the wriggling dragon to Ed’s side feel endless.

“Brother!” He kneels to shake Ed’s shoulder, maybe a little too much in his desperation—he’s still not quite used to the balance of the muscles in this body—and then allows himself a gasp of relief when Ed’s eyelids rise. “Brother, are you all right?”

“Never better,” Ed says. He sits up, puts a hand to the back of his head, and winces. “Well, maybe better a couple times.”

Al wants to smile, but he can’t.

Ed’s eyes narrow. “Hey, what is it? You did some pretty fine work over there. You should be proud of yourself.”

Al picks a few stalks of charred grass and then lets them fall. “It—it’s just—you were an alchemic prodigy, Brother. More than I could ever be, even if I am learning well. And it wasn’t just that you were so good at it. You _loved_ it. You loved making things out of raw material—changing things. It made you happy.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, blowing out a sigh that makes his bangs flutter, “it did. But there’s something that makes me a whole lot happier.”

Al watches him uncertainly. “What’s that?”

Ed leans forward and wraps both arms around him to hug him tightly. And Al can feel the warmth of his brother’s body, the tickle of his hair, the faint current of his breath. Al can hug him back and feel that, too.

“There is one problem, though,” Ed says, giving him a hand up. Al looks to him. “You know how Lieutenant Hawkeye’s always saying that Mustang is a backseat driver?”

Al blinks. “Yeah, but…”

Ed jabs a thumb at his own chest and beams. “You, Al, have got your own personal backseat alchemist.”


End file.
